Korean Cultural Customs

Things to remember, things to do and things to avoid doing while in Korea!

Take your shoes off!
It is disrespectful to enter someone’s home with your shoes on. In Korea they sit on the floor to eat and then roll out a sleeping mat onto the floor to sleep so it is important to keep the floor clean. Many Korean’s view westerners as backwards for keeping our shoes on in the house and I have actually seen some of Korean colleagues wrinkle their noses with disgust at the thought of sitting on carpet – especially carpet we have walked on with our outdoor shoes on!
For foreigners in Korea there are three things to remember:

- Take off your shoes when entering someone’s home
- Don’t try to tell Korean’s it’s ok for them to leave their shoes on
- Keep your floor clean!

My student's are tired!

A substantial amount of research has been done into how much sleep humans need to be healthy. Sleep is crucial to our health as it is the time that allows us to rest and regenerate and gives our bodies time to deal with damage our system has sustained during the day. It has also been suggested that sleep is important because it allows us to dream and therefore lets our subconscious deal with and rationalize the events of the day. So sleep maintains or physical and psychological well-being.